"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself
a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
- Hamlet
Act II scene ii

10 July 2006

Ants

Google Earth is improving its coverage of our planet - with those aerial photograph zones extended to even include the humble city of Sheffield. Clues in these close-up aerial views lead me to deduce that the satellite coverage of Sheffield was compiled in the summer of 2004 – probably in August.

And so now you can zoom right in on our humble semi-detached home on our humble street in our humble suburb of humble Sheffield. From this distance, people in the streets appear like ants casting ant-like shadows. Perhaps that’s all we are with our antennae and receptors, most of us worker ants, tending the larval ants while older ants decline into memory.

In these streets and houses and gardens we eke out our dreams, most of us quietly imagining that the spotlight of the world is focussed upon us but maybe we’re all just ants on a great antheap, connecting with other ants, busying ourselves day by day with close-up events of the here and now, rarely zooming away to look at the wider picture.

1 comment:

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